WASHINGTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Google on Tuesday asked the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to allow it to disclose more details about the national security request for its users' data, amid ongoing controversy over the government's internet surveillance programs.
The search engine company sent a letter to the office of U.S. Attorney General and the FBI on Tuesday morning, according to a statement released by Google.
In the letter, David Drummond, Google's Chief Legal Officer asked permission to publish "aggregate numbers of national security requests," including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests, in terms of the number and the scope of these requests.
Google said it had worked "tremendously hard" over the past 15 years to earn the users' trust, said the company.
"Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users' data are simply untrue," wrote the letter.
Google stressed that the government nondisclosure obligations about the FISA national security requests and the number of accounts covered by those requests fueled the speculation.
"Transparency here will likewise serve the public interest without harming national security," said Google in the letter.
Google has revealed statistics about government requests for user data in its Transparency Reports, but the company is barred from discussing or even acknowledging the existence of FISA orders.
Google and other major Internet companies denied news reports over the past week that they have given the National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to their servers to mine users' data as part of an internet surveillance program called PRISM.
According to the Guardian and the Washington Post reports last Thursday, the NSA and the FBI had been secretly tapping directly into the central servers of nine U.S. internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time.
The technology companies that participated in the programs reportedly include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
NEW DELHI, June 11 (Xinhua) -- India Tuesday voiced concern over the reported U.S. spying on internet data of Indian citizens, saying it would be "unacceptable" if domestic privacy laws were violated.
"We are concerned and surprised about it. We will find it to be unacceptable if Indian laws relating to the privacy of information of Indian ordinary citizens have been violated. Surely we will, frankly, find it unacceptable," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said in the national capital. Full story
MOSCOW, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Russia may grant political asylum to a former CIA whistleblower who has revealed Washington's highly classified global surveillance programs, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
"If we receive such a request, we'll consider it," local business daily Kommersant quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying. Full story
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The White House on Monday declined to comment on a whistle-blower who revealed details about two classified surveillance programs by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
White House spokesman Jay Carney said at the daily briefing that he would not comment on the development of a whistle-blower who admitted he was behind the recent leaks of classified surveillance programs. Full story
WASHINGTON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday defended the government's phone and internet surveillance program, stressing that the tracking of internet activity has not applied to U.S. citizens or people living in the country.
Obama played defense before media after delivering a televised speech on healthcare in the U.S. state of California, following days of reports on the government's secret surveillance programs. Full story
|
